I love Halloween. And by that I mean, of course, I love the excuse to buy giant bags of Hershey and Nestle candy bars, and not in those little wuss sizes either. Cause I’m ALL about the kids.

But I didn’t know how it works here in Scotland, so I consulted the brain trust: unsuspecting strangers who talk to me at the park. No, I know what you’re thinking. It’s the UK. When you see someone you know, you turn around and walk immediately in the other direction on the off-chance that they might want to talk to you. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you like each other. You probably do. But that still doesn’t mean you can talk in anywhere in public except for a pub.

Halloween’s Scottish Roots (Macbeth at Glamis Castle)

The one exception to that rule is my secret weapon. My little dog. There is absolutely no card-carrying resident of the British Isles who won’t stop to tell me that she’s a fine wee doggie. And then they’re mine for as long as it takes me to ask my question. So this week it was about local Halloween customs. To my surprise, I found that the local tradition of “guising” (as in dis-guise) predates American trick-or-treat. Children dressed as witches or ghouls are expected to recite some song or poem in return for treats and money. Excellent.

Only… I’m just not sure I have enough chocolate for every kilt and child in Glasgow. So whilst (you get to say whilst here) my fine wee doggie and I are off buying more Hershey and Nestle Cadbury, I’ll reblog last year’s Halloween column below. (Clearly, I haven’t gotten any better at this whole mothering thing in the interim…)
HALLOWEEN REPEAT: Another blast from the past column which originally appeared in the Champaign-Urbana News Gazette, October, 1991***

I used to be a good mother.

Before the birth of my first child, I read thirty-seven instruction manuals warning of her possible future as an ax-murderer or Republican if I failed to diaper, dress, or dose her with natural fibers. I followed their instructions until that fateful day early in her second year when my husband took her into Chez Mac’s to escape the rain. By the time I got there, it was too late: he had bought her an ice-cream cone. She was having a spiritual experience. Through the chocolate, I could see her thinking, “This stuff was out there and I’ve been eating yams?”

It was all downhill from there. Of course, I tried to keep up appearances. But the problem was that although my kids hadn’t read my Raising-the-Macrobiotic-Whole-Child manuals, each of them carefully studied the cultural treatises known as commercial advertising. Results?

While I bought whole grain flours to bake macrobiotic breads so dense they weighed more than bricks and doubled very usefully as doorstops, my children insisted on eating only store-bought white bread. (In national taste-tests, consumers preferred Kleenex™.)

While I bought natural fiber fabrics to sew their nonsexist playwear, my daughters insisted on wearing their girl-colored Better-Living-Through-Chemistry dresses to their tea parties, and my son refused to appear without his plastic superhero cape.

While I bought developmental, non-gender-specific playthings, my daughters held fashion shows for the stuffed toys and dolls, and their brother built the blocks and Legos into weapons of mass doll-destruction.

I asked myself, “If my children are fed, dressed, and entertained by a bunch of men on Madison Avenue, how come none of those guys are ever around when a table, toilet, or tush needs to be swabbed?” Mothering tip: talking to yourself is a common side-effect of motherhood. Generally speaking, bystanders will be more comfortable if you buy a small dog and pretend to address all comments to it while in public. (You should be concerned, though, when you start getting answers.)

Luckily, there are a few days in our child’s year where the compulsive guilt-driven mother gets the chance to really go all out: birthdays and Halloween. For example, the angst-Mom will spend several months and the better part of her life savings on birthday activities which her child’s guests complete in two and a half minutes, ignore, or throw up on.

On Halloween, the angst-Mom who refuses to spend $15 on a cheap plastic Miss America or armed turtle costume will cheerfully spend the week’s food budget on fabric and sew non-stop for days to create adorable little animal costumes.

What Mom spent weeks sewing

What actually went out trick-or-treating.

As a maternal veteran of ten Halloweens and seventy-six costumes [each of the four kids has at least two costumes per year – the adorable one I create and the one they actually wear], I would like to offer the following Halloween tips:

You can justify spending a small fortune on the costume by telling yourself that your child or your child’s sibling will wear it next year. (This will be easy for most women, who have at the back of their closets a number of bridesmaids dresses which they were supposed to “cut off and wear to parties later.” That will happen in the same fantasy where those animal costumes get re-worn.)

If you have been attempting to raise an egalitarian, non-sexist child using any means other than extensive genetic engineering, Halloween is the time to admit total defeat. I was driving a group of eight and nine-year-olds on a field trip before Halloween and asked about their costume plans. “I’m going to be a fairy/butterfly/princess,” said the girls. “I’m going to be a ninja carrying a star with blood and guts and an eyeball on it/ a guy escaped from a toxic waste dump after all his skin is peeled off/ zombie,” said the boys.

Five minutes before the school Halloween parade when your kids refuse to be caught dead in the little animal costumes, you can make a great ninja-turtle-shell with a garbage can lid, and your best silk bathrobe will do for Miss America.

When good costumes go bad

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Hahaha. I guess I was just the bad ole mom who made the costumes and said if you want a costume you will wear what I make. I would ask them what they wanted. One year it was a Hershey bar and one year it was a Pikachu complete with a tail getup that I actually got to work really well. I love making costumes–I make my own patterns. 😀

My younger daughter wasn’t walking her first Halloween so I took a one piece fuzzy nightie with feet and a hood, added a big pompon for a tail and made bunny ears so she could crawl on the floor of the porch. I miss those times. BTW, I’m not sure which is more frightful–the haggis costumes or the twerking–I think the latter. 😀 Take care!

I can’t really comment on the children bit as I have none (by choice), but I LOVED the bit about Scotland – how people avoid eye contact with those they know, but greet them warmly in the pub!!! That happens in some places in England too – when I lived in Norfolk I was SO guilty of it!!! I’d see a friend in the supermarket and quickly nip down the next aisle so as not to get stuck in a conversation when I was doing my shopping…. not always, but sometimes! Maybe it’s just because when you’re in the pub it’s because you feel like being sociable, whereas when you’re quickly doing shopping on the way home from work, you don’t, I dunno!

Ha! Now I just want to head to Tyne & Wear and stalk you in the grocery store!

One of the things I was completely unprepared for when we moved to England was chocolate. (Another was cheese.) I simply had NO idea how good it could be here. You can go to the local shops, plunk down a pathetically small bit of ££, and get fabulous chocolate. So this is my long-winded way of telling you not to worry about that Hershey chocolate bar. Except for it being the exact perfect size for s’mores (which you can’t make here anyway because you don’t have graham crackers—not sure how children survive kindergarten), the Hershey Bar isn’t a big loss.

And don’t even get me started on cheese! I have a seriously intense relationship with the french owner of the cheese shop down the road here. My husband would complain, but he’s always sending me down there for more. The pimp.

My mother made our costumes. The plural is because I had brothers, not because we got a new one every year. I was a witch for several years running. I didn’t mind. It was all about the chocolate for me. 🙂 The chocolate and Bazooka bubble gum.

My daughter gets a new costume every year. We usually go to one of the party stores, but this year we got one from Target. She’ll be a snow queen. And because I hunted down a story book, she’ll get to march in the school parade Friday. Oh, the things we do. 🙂

No, Danielle. No grandkids so far. But I wouldn’t say I’m bitter. (The ONLY reason I wouldn’t say that is because I’m not allowed to…) My kids are too busy saving and making jokes about the world. But my husband is kind of relieved, because he knows for a fact that about one nanosecond after I hear a grandchild rumor, I’ll be plunking a downpayment on the nearest condo and morphing into gramzilla.

I know that my mother spent the early years of my kids’ childhood utterly disappointed in me. I didn’t sew them costumes, I bought them. (gasp!) I did, however, manage to please her a few times when I had my kids wear the costumes she had made for me when I was a kid. They were the most adorable clown and Peter Pan you’d ever see. But, apart from those years, they were dressed in the party store’s expensive, shoddily crafted costume of choice … which, indeed, always ran right down that gender line I had tried to avoid.

Are you kidding? I’m completely jealous. I would have killed to head to Chez Target and waltz out with the Licensing-du-jour special. But no. I had to have the kids who wanted to be something Madison Ave never considered. (I’m thinking of the year my little toaster, recycling center, and sta-puft marshmallow bag hit the streets to trick-or-treat.)

I loved the post .. in fact I loved it so much that I’m going to use it as suggested reading for my ESL conversation class … we’re doing Halloween on Thursday. BTW I suppose you’ve read something about the history of Halloween … seems that most of the trick-or-treating etc is a rather recent advent in North America … if this blog site is to be taken seriously : http://www.halloweenhistory.org/

Wow! That’s really flattering (although probably confusing for your students.) I liked that link to history of Halloween too. I’d love to know what your students make of all this. Do they do anything to mark Halloween in Italy?

Recently Halloween has been catching on here, usually the pubs and restaurants put up decorations and people like to dress up. Kids have Halloween parties too and the supermarkets fill up with Halloween cakes and candy. So they probably won’t be too confused. I’ll tell you all about the reaction of the class, I think they’ll love the post 🙂

When we were in Switzerland trick-or-treating was terrifying. Not because the costumes were so scary or anything like that. No, it was the Swiss/French habit of having flaming torches lighting up the way to their doors … REAL FLAMES. My son’s friend Joe wore a Zorro costume and I spent the evening expecting to have to throw myself bodily on top of him when he ignighted. Flames + children is not a good combination!

That was hysterical! Also somewhat comforting to know someone else will spend a fortune on fabric and hours sewing only to find out the kid is mortified at your idea of a costume. Your wee dragon is adorable.
Still laughing at “good costumes gone bad”.

Like I said, those pristine, untouched by little hands costumes are hanging in my closet right next to the bridesmaids dresses I was supposed to cut off and wear to parties. I’m more likely to wear the baby animal costume…

Love it!
One year, my mother sent my old witch costume. My daughter Courtney loved it so much, it was in shreds by the first week in October!
Thanks for bringing this to the party! Have fun and don’t forget to dance!

The only costume that ever got regular workouts was my wedding dress. It’s graced dress-up, Halloween, and high school plays. And each time, it looked FAR better than it ever did on me. (Oh, the eighties…a long, bad fashion mistake.)

REALLY funny! I went out and bought white and yellow crepe paper to do either my daughter lookalike pumpkin or Elsa and then we find out it has to be scary one. Now I have to go looking for brown wool for a werewolf. I’m just talking about the pumpkins not them lol.

I was never very good at making costumes when my kids were younger, well, never really tried because I just knew I wouldn’t be any good, so just went for the shop bought options. But last year when my son was almost 12, I discovered I could delight him at halloweeen by simply ripping and cutting randomly an old pair of jeans and white t-shirt and splashing red paint all over. I’m the costume-making queen now – who knew! And even better than that, he told me he’s quite happy this year to wear that same one again from last year – woop woop! My daughter (15) is asking me to buy her horror contact lenses, but I’m resisting.

Play to your strengths. Next time he asks for something, you can just remind him that you do TOO give him great things, like that great Halloween costume. I think you’re right to resist your daughter’s contacts request, though. I’ve heard that they’re just a gateway drug, and next thing you know she’ll be wearing cat-ears and moonlighting in the chorus line at the Hot Box.

I did not know Halloween was celebrated in other countries. Do they also have all the slutty nurses, slutty French maids, and slutty police women in abundance on Halloween over there? If so, I’m so there!

Also, always go with the zombie outfits and makeup. Sorry mommies, but this is 2014. No kid wants to be caught dead in a little kiddie costume!

I’m so glad to hear you’ve showered. So many people don’t get the importance of good blog hygiene. And I ended up in Scotland the old-fashioned way…following a guy. (In this case, I’ve been married to him for lots of decades.) He does want me to stop introducing him as my first husband.